Pork, bacon & ham labelled ‘British’ must come from animals born, reared and slaughtered within the UK. If you are not buying direct from a farmer you might find it helpful to look for a quality mark. These mean that all stages of the food chain have been independently checked to ensure that they meet the required standards.

We tend to equate ‘eating quality’ with tenderness and succulence. It is therefore important to use the correct cut of meat for a particular dish: for example, boned spare rib of pork for roasting, pork tenderloins for pan-frying or belly of pork for slow-roasting.

To download a diagram of where different cuts of meat come from on the carcass and a guide to which cuts are the best ones to use for different regional dishes use this link.

There are 14 breeds of pig in the UK including:

Bacon is the word used for the raw pig meat that has been wet or dry-cured. The word bacon means ‘back’ but in fact refers to cuts from the side of the carcass that is butchered in a similar way to the butchering of pork. ‘Gammon’ is the word used for the raw, cured hind leg of a pig removed from a side of bacon.

Ham is the term used to describe cured and cooked pork. It is generally the hind leg of a pig; shoulder is used too but this is not technically ‘ham’. More confusingly, it also refers to cured hind leg that has been air-dried and is usually sliced very thinly and served cold. Both can be smoked or left green after curing.

Bacon and ham is either dry-cured, producing a drier finish and fuller, more pronounced flavour, or wet-cured, producing a succulent and seasoned product more moist than the dry cured product and different in texture but no less equal in quality. The cured bacon and ham can then be smoked or left ‘green’ (unsmoked).

There are over 400 varieties of sausages available in Britain today, many named after the places they were originally made. A good British sausage is juicy and plump with a meat content of at least 70%. Sausages can be made from other minced meats but they are most often associated with minced pork.

If you are a consumer and would like to find out where you can buy British pork, bacon & ham then...

To find British pork, bacon and ham in supermarkets, please click on the Want to buy British logo on the top right hand corner of this page.

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For recipes that feature British pork, bacon & ham click here.